Why are baby's hats so darn fun to make?

I've finally started on the Owl hat my friend wanted for her daughter, inspired by one she found online. I have several photos to go by and am really trying to recreate the hat as best I can. So far, I think I've done pretty darn well! And I'm not sure that it makes sense that people are trying to sell patterns for similarly designed hats for $5-10! IMO, patterns should only be sold if they required a bunch of frogging to design/create because, otherwise, it was easy enough to figure out that most anyone should be able to do it! If one really wants to charge for their pattern and it's pretty easy, make it a couple bucks at most! Or, at least, allow people to sell items they create with the simple pattern if you must charge them $10 for it.

I don't mean to be a tease, but I'll post my pattern (for free) when I am done and can post some photos along with it. Stay tuned!

Also on the agenda, a couple of stegosaurus hats for etsy customers. It's seemingly a hit among moms with boys, despite it being pretty darn cute on little girls too! (if a dinosaur can be blue and orange, why can't it be pink and purple?). I'm working on a green one with dark brown plates (spikes?) and then on to a light green hat with orange plates. Hmm, green seems to be the color of choice.

When I'm done with these, I'm totally itching to come up with some more! I want to make a bee hat and a flower hat, but will likely need to start focusing more on just bunny hats first. Fortunately, baby hats work up pretty quickly (2-3 hours for me, generally), but I still need to figure out colors and such! I also imagine that most people would prefer natural fibers to acrylic (honestly, I would LOVE to be able to  work basically solely with fibers like bamboo and silk, but it's just too $$$ :( ), so I will probably look into at least getting some more Peaches & Creme yarn in colors other than ombres and white & ecru.

Speaking of cotton yarn - anyone out there have any luck dying it? A few months ago, I wanted to see about naturally dying cotton yarn with things like dandelions & strawberries, but never got around to trying it.

Also, how about "tarn" (yarn made from t-shirts)? I have a rotary cutter and a self-healing mat and am itching to try to make some, but don't really have any shirts I want to cut up! (unfortunately, we've donated quite a few of my husband's old t-shirts over the years!) I guess I need to hit up some garage sales and thrift stores to find some...

I'm now, officially, an aunt!

Caron Simply Soft Collection Autumn Maize and Eco Ocean

And so, now, I am making all sorts of things for my nephew (my sister-in-law's infant son), Orion Augustus.

I made him a ribbed hat that was striped with Caron's Simply Soft Collection Yarn: "Autumn Maize" and their Eco "Ocean" that was for a 3-6mos old rather than a newborn. I made some before for my friend's newborn and little Kami grew out of them within about 2 weeks, so I'm likely to err on the side of older from now on! I modified this pattern to be 30 FSC instead of a ch of 25 and then did 36 rows (17.5").

Orion's Stegosaurus Hat,
also available on my Etsy Page

The other two hats I made him were inspired-by that I just played around with until I got it how I wanted it. One was a newsboy cap made with cotton yarn and a wooden button from my collection. The other a stegosaurus earflap beanie, a bit of a test run for the hat I intend to make little Kami. It was my friend Sarah who showed me a photo of someone else's hat and gushed over it that inspired me there. :)

I've been busier on Etsy lately for some reason! Unfortunately, not necessarily a lot of crochet orders, but many, many origami lucky star & lucky star strip orders. I have, however, had a lot of interest in my Castle Crashers beanie and the animal orbs, which is great! Love spreading the Castle Crashers love!

One thing that has also kept me busy (besides my adorable shih tzu, Wicket, and my other crafting!) has been the starghan I made for another friend's baby shower. Everyone knows I love stars plus it's a more interesting and unique afghan than many I've seen, so I have decided that is going to be my standard baby shower gift, haha. I've already given 3 away so far! This one was fun because it actually went with the nursery theme - "Starry Night". I made it with pastel blue, yellow and white and put a "cloud"/shell border along the edge.